Born from Honda’s victory in the Paris Dakar rally, The Honda Africa Twin hit the scene in 1988 with ‘modern’ features like liquid cooling, an electric starter, and disc brakes. But the current Honda CRF1100 Africa Twin bears little resemblance to its ancestor. It now boasts a 1,084 cc motor that makes triple-digit power and torque, and enough elec-trickery to make Inspector Gadget blush.
Purists have a lot to say about the complexity of modern motorcycles like the Africa Twin, but the fact is that much of that complexity makes those bikes better. ?This thing rips,? Bujar Muharemi says, bluntly, of the new Africa Twin. ?I was a tech grinch until I tried it… now I want one.?

Bujar and his brother, Gaz, are the founders of Auto Fabrica?a UK-based custom shop we’ve followed since their early days. The Muharemi bros have a knack for highly conceptual designs, and create machines that feel more like factory prototypes than traditional customs. Case in point, this retro-futuristic Honda CRF1100 Africa Twin, designated ‘Type 22.’ ?Type 22 started as a design study on what we could do if we used mid-80s Honda Paris Dakar and enduro bikes as inspiration, but used a modern CRF1100 donor bike,? Bujar explains. ?This was a very interesting challenge for us because as much as we like slick and flowy art deco design, we also like to dip over to the super exciting race bikes and cars. We are automotive designers, after all.?

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